Word: pacino
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...Pacino steals the show as the head of a truly diabolical New York law firm that snags Keanu Reeves' hotshot Southern lawyer and quickly enmeshes him in a half-kinky, half-campy world of sin and decadence. Borrowing from The Firm and Rosemary's Baby without quite matching either, it tends to flag whenever Pacino's off screen. Fortunately, he's never away for long and treats us to a devilishy good time with his rip-roaringly over-the-top antics...
...Pacino steals the show as the head of a truly diabolical New York law firm that snags Keanu Reeves' hotshot Southern lawyer and quickly enmeshes him in a half-kinky, half-campy world of sin and decadence. Borrowing from The Firm and Rosemary's Baby without quite matching either, it tends to flag whenever Pacino's off screen. Fortunately, he's never away for long and treats us to a devilishly good time with his rip-roaringly over-the-top antics. --Brandon K. Walston...
...Keanu Reeves walking out of a hospital to find all of Manhattan empty. Milton's penthouse exudes an atmosphere of slick, menacing, kinky-campy decadence--it's Hugh Hefner meets the Marquis de Sade. Hackford is smart enough not to let the cinematography get in the way of Pacino: as Milton, the actor is his own special effect. And when the actual special effects--including a wall sculpture that comes to swarming, slithery life--do appear, they pale in comparison to Pacino's "hoo-ha" rambunctiousness...
...film also suffers from being way too long, clocking in at two hours and 20 minutes (including a pointless 15-minute side plot that wastes the great Delroy Lindo in a clumsily caricatured role). Whenever the film begins to drag--which is pretty much whenever Pacino is off screen for more than ten minutes--Hackford throws in some nudity. Pacino excepted, nearly all the main characters get to run around at least once in their birthday suits...
However, Devil's Advocate is unquestionably Pacino's show. His turn here isn't, of course, on the level of his work in The Godfather series, but it is arguably one of his most dynamic performances since Scent of Woman. More Dionysus than Antichrist--he calls himself "the last real humanist"--he gives the funniest and most genuinely charismatic portrayal of the devil since Jack Nicholson in The Witches of Eastwick...